I Am A Woman With A Mission And A Past To Undo...

A is home from school. That's always a cause for celebration. I haven't seen her since January 5th.

This is the longest time in our lives that we have gone without seeing each other. She decided to skip spring break with her friends to come back to NYC. She says she was 'mom sick'. Good, because I was "A sick".

On the ride home today we talked about kids. A says she doesn't want any. Ever. I say that is totally ok, but she's too young to decide that.

I never thought I'd have kids. I was afraid I'd be a terrible mom. Then A came along and we raised each other. The relationship I have with her and R are my two longest partnerships.

A never met my mom. As much as I loved my mom, I chose to come across country to get away from her. And her insanity. As I got older, I learned to have patience for her, but that didn't extend to my buying a plane ticket to San Diego.

After she died I went through all of my baby pics to show A how childhood in the 1970s looked.

One of my favorite pics is of me and my mom in what I thought was a moment right after childhood. My entire life I thought of that picture as me and my mom after our first few minutes together.

I guess I romanticized it.

As an adult, I learned that no, that wasn't right. That picture was of me and my mom when I was about 4 months old. Right when she had the first of many breakdowns. It put my childhood and its chaos into perspective.

Here was this woman who, at 27, had planned to have a child for years. Then, when I came along, she wasn't prepared.

Sometimes, I get very defensive when I feel my parenting is called into question by people who don't know me and A on any sub-superficial level.

I think the reason is because I have raised both myself and an awesome daughter.

One who could go anywhere she wanted this week. And where she wanted to be was home. With her mom.

She puts my life into the kind of perspective no other relationship can. For that I am always going to be thankful. And spoil her.

(post title: "So have I for you"...Nikka Costa)

And Then...A New Start.

I thought about posting this really great intro. Then I deleted it.

Then I posted a mediocre entry and yes, deleted it.

The truth is that I am not sure how to start this new blogging life so I am just going to dive in.

I'm clueless.

A good friend of mine recently said that I am "consistently inconsistent, securely insecure, and genuinely human". She's right.

The truth is that I'd love to be Wonder Woman. I'm not.

The truth is that I'd also love to be able to say that I am the only person who has ever had a love turn to something else. That I am the only person who can't get certain things right. The only person who sometimes wants everything to stop for a few minutes while I figure out what's happening.

The truth is that I'm not Atlas. I don't have to carry the world on my shoulders. I learned this in therapy.

No, I starting learning this when my daughter, who was five at the time, said: You don't have to be perfect.

Always.

She was right. But I still kept trying. Right through to a second marriage to someone I knew wasn't right. My heart told me that we were great as boyfriend and girlfriend but that marriage would change all of that. I was right. Unfortunately, 9/11 created a lot of marriages. Some great. Some not.

We made great roomies. I just felt we needed to be able to be more to each other.

Then...March 2008. My whole world changed. I tried to fight it but sometimes you really are at destiny's mercy.

Fast forward to today and I have learned something very valuable: You can never 'unlearn' things you wish you never knew.

You can't unlearn that you aren't loved. You can't unlearn that your passions lie in a different direction than someone you love. You can't unlearn that sometimes love just isn't going to answer all of your questions. Even if on many levels it puts your heart at ease. There are so many things that so many of us can't ever unlearn. I am sorry.

It isn't my fault, but I'm still sorry.

Where did I learn all of this? On an adult site. Why? That's where I was when my life changed.

To be honest, I am not singular. I know many people who can tell you the same story. Some of them are my friends. Some are not.

I don't have to worry about their stories here. I only have to, for the first time in years, worry about my own. It's spastic, honest, brutal and silly. But what it will try not to be...for once...is vague.

And that may be the scariest part about this.

Don't Need Another Perfect Line...

You could be dead.

Or hurt.

Or living a fantastic new life somewhere warm.

Or just living the life you had when I knew you.

You could be anywhere.

But you weren't where I last saw you. Or where you saw me.

Come to think of it, maybe we weren't there, either.

Maybe we were already gone and didn't know it.

Or maybe we were just waiting.

I'm starting fresh. Like you said we should.

But you could be dead. Or I could be.

Nah, I'm sure we're alive. If for no other reason than I believe in the hope that only children have a right to hold onto.

Just because.

(photo image from goggleearth.com image databank; uncredited)

You've Got To Know When To Hold 'Em...

Four years.

That's how long I've been blogging.

I've done it all. Politics, humor, relationships, parenting.

Love found and love lost.

In all of that time there has never been a time where I could write for myself. I always hedged. Always.

Depending on who was reading, I'd get a lot of push-back for the things I said.

If I seemed unhappy, I was asked why and I didn't always know the answer.

If I seemed happy I was asked why and I couldn't always share.
When I came back from Paris recently I just knew it was time to change. Time to go. I waited until a number of us went to Vegas and decided it was the right time.

Kenny Rogers knew what he was talking about.

Time for a fresh start. Time to remove the vague writing and metaphors. Time to just write what I want.

I'm a bit scared. What if I can't do it? What if, like my first post was afraid of four years ago...I have nothing to say.

Oh, well. Never stopped me before!

Until The Job Is Done, Baby...Until The Job Is Done.

It is hard to believe that the earthquake that hit Haiti was really only a few days ago in the grand scheme of time.

There will be that moment, well into the distant future, where someone will ask 'where were you when it hit' and, like all enormous tragedies...you will remember.

There is a lot to be said for the aid we offer during times of our own prosperity. There is even more to be said when we give more than we can truly afford. That is what we've seen in recent years. With our own economy faltering, if not downright stumbling, we have seen event after event that have been too much for us to ignore.

Is it enough to care if you also do not act? As a Catholic, my religious upbringing says no. As a person, I did not religion to be the sole reminder of that. Even the least of us has a responsibility to ensure the greater good.

Without this basic concept of empathy being a well-developed part of our consciousness, we are no better than the most under-developed of the animal kingdom.

Natural disasters have no emotion. They show no pity and they spare no particular caste of people. They destroy, because it is the only thing they know how do to.

It is always left to those who live in the affected area to provide the most immediate response to an emergency, and then it is up to the rest of us to offer additional support. It can be through donations of food, money, clothes or time.

It can also be something as simple as spreading the word. Too often, people do not know how to help, so the idea of 'spreading knowledge' is an important, if over-looked, necessity.

How long do we help or how long do we care? As one women in Chicago recently told her son, whose grandparents are in Haiti and in need of help...we do it until the job is done, baby, until the job is done.

The United States Will Not Torture...

And then there was a clear change of course...

No more 'Mission Accomplished' statements when the truth was something else altogether.

No more telling the American public that torture was not something we did - when the truth was evident to anyone who would listen or cared to look.

No more lip service to a Middle East Peace process that is going to be difficult and that may well take generations to take hold. But no more letting the fear of progress hinder the call to action.

I can remember September 11, 2001 like it was minutes ago. I know where I was, I remember the fear, the running away from the Trade Centers, the waiting to see which of my friends were okay, and sadly, which were not.

I can remember crying a few days later. Uncontrollable sobbing for what we had lost. Yes, this country has seen our share of wars before, but in our lifetime, we had never seen this. This breach of safety we had been told existed.

Then I remember waiting. Waiting for anything. Waiting for someone to make sense of it all. Waiting for my call to action. What could I do? What could the people I knew do? How could we help. Some of us joined the military. Others, peace groups. Many of us wanted an answer or a million answers, but we wanted to play a role.

We were told to shop. To go about our business. To do what we were doing on September 1oth. The President had everything under control. Nothing could have been more true.

I waited, as did many in the world. The world wept with us. Maybe it was out of true concern, and maybe a part of it was a shattering of their innocence as well. All I know is that at that moment, we could have chosen any course of action and the world would have rushed to help.

Instead, we decided on a course that changed our nation. Maybe we didn't realize it then, but it became clear within months...the inept response to 9/11, became the inept responses to Katrina and the financial industry and every other area of importance that required leadership.

Today, President Obama confirmed something we already knew, we can not be better than our enemies when we become just like them.

Say what you will: You can try to blame liberals for ruining the country, being weak; not understanding....

And yet, here we are after eight years. Not sure if we are more safe. Only sure that within our own borders, we are less secure. Less secure from a recession; less secure in our ability to deal with crises at home; less secure in our ability to respond to crises around the world - and be taken seriously.

The United States will not torture. Serious statement to make. One that may be a turning point.

These Are Your Neighbors...And I Think They Hate You.

A vote for John McCain is a vote for...

I've been watching clips of a Palin/McCain 2008 (tm pending by Sarah Palin) and as John McCain whips the audience into shape by asking "Who is the real Barack Obama", the audience is clearly heard yelling out all kinds of things.

"Terrorist" is one word that is heard above the rumblings of a group made up of what I assume are moms and dads and college students people living in the same 'probable recession' that everyone else is experiencing.

You can hear lots of other things - McCain heard them too. He heard them loud enough to pause for a second before going on with his vitriol.

You can sit in your home and decide if this is the type of person with whom you agree, but when you hear someone in the audience yell out: "Kill Him" in reference to Sen. Obama, then I question your sanity and McCain's.

I've seen some truly disgusting things in my life - and this new McCain decision to go so negative is frightening. Why? Well, for someone who was done in by similar tactics...well, I guess memory is short-term for some people.

I thought a vote for this ticket would set women back 100 years.

Now I believe it will also set back minorities. Maybe not 100 years, but at least back to the 1950's.I don't really care who people vote for this year. You can't change people's minds. You can't get them to see that just saying it's the Dems running a negative campaign doesn't make it true.Y

ou can't get them to see that the someone is gasping for air when the economy is failing.You can't get them to see that someone who once called his wife a 'cunt'; has a history of anger issues; can't tell when the economy (other than his own) is tanking; can't be called anything other than 'erratic' - well this person needs to be vetted just as much as anyone else.

Playing to people's fears - some people are good at this. What's awful is that I am actually scared. Scared that I live in a country where my neighbors hate someone they don't know. Hate them so much that instead of 'fire' in a crowded theater, it's 'kill him' at a public rally.

Too bad the McCain who ran in 2000 is long-gone. He'd probably be ashamed by this new guy wearing his suits. That McCain would have at least attempted to address the fanatics.

This one courts them.